Facebook may not yet have plans to release a phone, but it is clearly intent on expanding its mobile reach.

On Wednesday, the company announced new features that will allow merchants and retailers to offer coupons and specials though the Facebook mobile application.

“It starts to solve an age-old problem that local businesses have always had,” said Emily White, director of local at Facebook. “They’ve been told they need to be online. But it hasn’t always been clear what the benefit is. That’s what this deals platform allows. It’s turning those fans, those visitors, those eyeballs into real dollars, real people and real business.”

Facebook members can see which deals are available when they use Places, Facebook’s location feature, which allows users to check into particular places and broadcast their location to friends. A yellow icon will denote whether there is a redeemable deal or coupon available for a particular venue. Users will show their phone’s screen to a merchant or cashier to claim the deal.

The new features will pose a big competitive challenge to start-ups that have been experimenting with similar ways to offer rewards and deals on cellphones, including Foursquare, Yelp and Loopt.

One of Facebook’s first partnerships is with the Gap. The company plans to run a campaign offering a free pair of jeans to the first 10,000 users who check in to their local Gap store using Facebook’s mobile application. Facebook also outlined plans to work with major retailers like H&M and McDonalds for special offers, but eventually all merchants and small businesses with a Facebook page will be able to offer deals through Facebook’s mobile application.

Local retailers will be able to offer several different kinds of deals, including one-time offers and loyalty rewards, as well as “friend deals,” for those who check in and “tag” multiple friends. Mr. Zuckerberg said it would be difficult to defraud the system because users would be required to be present in order to redeem the coupon.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and chief executive officer of the company, said 200 million people were now accessing Facebook through its mobile application, a threefold increase since last year.

“Think about Android and iPhone,” he said. “This is a much bigger footprint than that. The only bigger platform is the mobile Web itself.”

“Our goal is to make everything social, no matter what platform you’re building for,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.

Facebook, the most successful start-up of the last decade, is only six years old, and an initial public offering is still a way off.

Jim Wilson

Dave Morin decided to leave Facebook this year to build a company called Path.

Jim Wilson

Netanel Jacobsson, who left Facebook last year, has started PlayHopper, a social gaming company.

But a number of Facebook’s early employees are giving up their stable jobs, free food and laundry service to build their own businesses. Many of them are leaving as wealthy, either on paper or after cashing in their ownership stakes to do what they say they like best: start companies.

Dustin Moskovitz, 26, who co-founded Facebook with his Harvard roommate Mark Zuckerberg, left his job on Facebook’s technical staff to create Asana, which makes software that helps workers collaborate.

Another Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, also 26, has started Jumo, a social network for “people who want to change the world.”

Dave Morin, formerly the senior platform manager, is building Path, a still-secretive venture, while Adam D’Angelo, who was Facebook’s chief technology officer, and Charlie Cheever, another senior manager, set off in 2008 and 2009 respectively to start Quora, a question-and-answer site. More than half a dozen start-ups can trace their origins to Facebook alumni.

The departures follow a familiar pattern among other Silicon Valley successes like Yahoo, eBay and Google. After amassing fortunes, early employees start walking out the door.

These ex-Facebookers are leaving before any I.P.O. of the company’s shares. They can do that because Facebook shares are surprisingly liquid. The rise of exchanges like Second Market and SharesPost over the last couple of years have allowed shareholders in private companies to sell their stakes more easily than before. These markets function much like a stock exchanges for publicly traded companies, although the pool of buyers and sellers is much smaller. Facebook’s overall value is around $30 billion on the exchanges.

Last year, Facebook helped current and former employees to cash out some of their shares to a Russian Internet company. Digital Sky Technologies, now known as Mail.ru, agreed to buy up to $100 million in stock to increase its existing stake in Facebook.

Many of Facebook’s alumni are wealthy from stock options they earned while working there. The Facebook expatriates are not saying who among them is rich on paper only and who has actually cashed in some holdings. But Mr. Moskovitz owns around 6 percent of Facebook, according to the book “The Facebook Effect,” and would therefore be worth about $1.8 billion.

By no means is Mr. Zuckerberg watching a mass exodus. The number of people leaving has been relatively small. Larry Yu, a Facebook spokesman, said that the company’s early employees tended to be entrepreneurs at heart, and it was therefore not surprising that they had left to start their own companies. “We don’t view attrition as a particularly prominent issue for us at this time,” he said.

Former Facebookers describe the company as a fabulous training ground. Mr. Zuckerberg hammered home the lesson of focusing on the long term by declining to accept ads on the site during its infancy or to be acquired by other companies.

Some people are born with a knack for typing quickly on a mobile phone, clacking away at a virtual or physical keyboard as if it were attached to a desktop computer. But if you weren’t, there may be help, from 3qubits, a mobile phone software company started by two PhD mathematics student at Cambridge University in England. Their solution to tiny mobile keyboards is a new virtual keyboard they call 8Pen, expected to be introduced on Tuesday.

At first glance 8Pen replaces the traditional area of a keyboard with a multi-colored X and a large black dot. Letters seem to be randomly placed, yet the keyboard creators say there’s a rhyme and reason to every aspect of the new layout.

8PenThe 8Pen keyboard interface.

Michael Fester, who worked with his partner, Volker Schlue, to create the new interface, said in a phone interview that the new keyboard was born from a discussion about the frustration of typing on small mobile phones and constantly making mistakes.

“We really think this could replace keyboards for small devices,” Mr. Fester said. “At first we are going to launch with an Android version of the software, but we’ve filed a patent on the keyboard and want to build it out for the iPhone, Windows and even game controllers.”

On the company Web site the two 8Pen creators try to explain how to use their newfangled keyboard:

A character is produced by pressing down in the centre, entering any of the 4 sectors, and then passing through either 1, 2, 3 or 4 adjacent sectors in either clockwise or anti-clockwise direction, before returning to the centre. The order of the letters along the edges, and the side on which they are placed, indicate the number of sectors to be passed through, and the direction of the movement, respectively.

Work is a necessity for most of us. We need it in order to pay for the rent and other bills. We also need a job so that we can earn enough to purchase supplies.

There are several other reasons why people work. Some because of ambition while others because of pride. Whatever your reason is, you will surely deal with stress. Stress is present in any type of profession. If you are in the corporate world, you will deal with executives, clients, and bosses. If you are working in the medical industry, on the other hand, you will deal with doctors, chief nurses, and patients.

Stress affects a person in different ways. The way he deals with it depends on the level of stress he faces. Stress can affect his performance too, especially if there are no programs in the organization that helps employees deal with stress.

How a person deals with stress reflects on his performance. Here are some changes in your performance if you let stress handle you instead of the other way around:

1. It will be difficult for you to concentrate. A demanding boss can be very stressful. Instead of focusing on your job, all you can think of is how to impress your boss and you will not have any work done. If you are a nurse who has a very unappreciative patient, you will not be able to give your best to your other patients if you keep on thinking about that particular patient.

2. You will not be able to finish your tasks on time. Stress can be very distracting. If you keep on thinking about the different issues in the workplace, you commit mistakes. Mistakes are time consuming. You have to repeat what you have done to make sure it is error free.

3. It will also affect your relationship with your colleagues. You will find yourself irritable. You find it difficult to laugh at their jokes and you try to shut off from any team bonding activities.

It is important that you channel the issues in the office the right way. Identify what your stressors are. Talk to your friends in the workplace about the things at work that causes stress. They will be the most sensible people to discuss these issues with because they understand where you are coming from. Who else would understand a nurse, than the person who wears the same landau scrub, right?

If you feel that the issues from work are hindering you from meeting the deadlines, change your approach. Find a better way to concentrate on what you are doing. Find a way to deal with your stressors better. Use them as a challenge in order to excel. However, you should be careful. Most of the time, your will to prove yourself stresses you more than it should.

No matter how stressed you are, try your best to maintain a good working relationship with you office mates. Learn from them, if they do not look as stressed out as you, you might find helpful tips from them. Most of the time, you will need the help and advices of the people who understand your situation in order to deal with stress better.

“In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.” – Happy at work quotes by John Ruskin

Enormous amounts of our time, in fact one third of our day is spent in the workplace and with recession, anxiety and job stress being the order of the day, the difference between, “Oh crap, it’s Monday” and “Thank God it’s Monday” is determined by whether or not you are happy at work. So what are the factors that determine happiness at workplace and what exactly is the difference between a happy and an unhappy employee. Is it good communication between management and staff, and working with friendly colleagues or is it about an individual’s outlook? Well, here is a look at what constitutes happiness and how to be happy at work place.

How to Be Happy at Workplace

In a research conducted in UK, it was found that only four out of every five employees were happy at work. Surprisingly contrary to popular notion, it was not the salary or the love for the work that made people happy. Instead friendly, supportive colleagues and a good manager have been found to be the primary causes of happiness at work. So how do you keep your spirits up and foster a sense of joy on the job? Here are some tips to help you on your way to finding happiness and complete job satisfaction in the workplace.

Start with a Positive Outlook: Happiness is a state of mind, an attitude, and though not many people realize it, but staying happy at work is totally based on your motivations and a positive outlook towards your job. I know most of you would not really agree with me but it is the truth. Dwelling on the good aspects of the work rather than rattling on and on about what makes you unhappy is the basic key for happiness. Negativity and gossiping around about the bad things may be easy but it is looking at the bright side that is the difficult part of a job. As Francesca Reigler puts it, “Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”

Challenge Yourself: Rather than looking for help and motivation from other people, challenge yourself and take charge of your own growth professionally. Boredom is one of the primary factors that causes people to switch jobs. So find new challenges and march to the music of your personally developed plan and goals. It is a great feeling to take control over what you do and see a task through. If you hit a roadblock then it is a good idea to take help from your manager, but complete reliance on someone for your career advancement is futile. Read more on how to stay motivated.

Make Friends: Having someone to talk to on a social levels and in fact having coworkers that you like to and enjoy working with is a hallmark of happiness at the workplace. Talk to people, get to know them and try to enhance personal relations in the workplace. Meeting new people and getting fresh perspectives can help you to keep yourself interested in your work. Also knowing that you have someone to share and care about you can make work hours fun. However, try to avoid negative conversations, gossip, and unhappy people as much as possible. This only makes you even more depressed.

Complete your Tasks: Complete your tasks, however disagreeable or tough they might be. This gives you an individual sense of achievement and motivates you to work towards your goals in future. Also keep learning and gaining new insights while at work. This will not only help you with the current job but also take you ahead career wise. So start prioritizing your tasks and completing them.

Take a Break: Sitting and staring at your screen all day long is not going to help you. Instead take breaks and go outside for some time. They do not necessarily have to be long breaks but going out for a few minutes to feel the breeze can keep you refreshed. De-stressing at work by eating your lunch outside or work for a few minutes during that hour to rejuvenate yourself each day. This helps you stay happy at work. Along with this you also need vacations to refresh yourself and rest properly. After all that is why your company gives it you. So utilize the one week and rest completely before you come back to work.

The Child Tax Credit is a valuable credit that can significantly reduce your tax liability. Here are 10 important facts from the IRS about this credit and how it may benefit your family.

Amount – With the Child Tax Credit, you may be able to reduce your federal income tax by up to $1,000 for each qualifying child under the age of 17.

Qualification – A qualifying child for this credit is someone who meets the qualifying criteria of six tests: age, relationship, support, dependent, citizenship, and residence.

Age Test – To qualify, a child must have been under age 17 – age 16 or younger – at the end of 2009.

Relationship Test – To claim a child for purposes of the Child Tax Credit, they must either be your son, daughter, stepchild, foster child, brother, sister, stepbrother, stepsister or a descendant of any of these individuals, which includes your grandchild, niece or nephew. An adopted child is always treated as your own child. An adopted child includes a child lawfully placed with you for legal adoption.

Support Test – In order to claim a child for this credit, the child must not have provided more than half of their own support.

Dependent Test – You must claim the child as a dependent on your federal tax return.

Citizenship Test – To meet the citizenship test, the child must be a U.S. citizen, U.S. national, or U.S. resident alien.

Residence Test – The child must have lived with you for more than half of 2009. There are some exceptions to the residence test, which can be found in IRS Publication 972, Child Tax Credit.

Limitations – The credit is limited if your modified adjusted gross income is above a certain amount. The amount at which this phase-out begins varies depending on your filing status. For married taxpayers filing a joint return, the phase-out begins at $110,000. For married taxpayers filing a separate return, it begins at $55,000. For all other taxpayers, the phase-out begins at $75,000. In addition, the Child Tax Credit is generally limited by the amount of the income tax you owe as well as any alternative minimum tax you owe.

Additional Child tax Credit – If the amount of your Child Tax Credit is greater than the amount of income tax you owe, you may be able to claim the Additional Child Tax Credit.

SharesPost Inc., a marketplace for trading in private companies, started an index Wednesday that valued Palo Alto-based Facebook Inc. at $11.5 billion. The index, which SharesPost says is the first of its kind, is aimed at helping potential buyers and sellers determine what companies backed by venture-capital and private-equity firms are worth and encourage more trading of their shares.

Zynga, the San Francisco-based maker of the “Mafia Wars” and “FarmVille” games played on Facebook, was valued at $2.61 billion on March 1, according to the SharesPost measure. Twitter of San Francisco, the third-largest social networking site in the U.S., had a value of $1.44 billion. LinkedIn, the Mountain View-based online business-networking company, was valued at $1.31 billion. Tesla, the maker of electric sports cars that hasn’t posted a profit in six years, is the only company of the seven in the index that has already filed for an IPO. The valuation for the producer of the $109,000 electric Roadster in the SharesPost gauge was $1.28 billion as of March 1.

ONLINE

MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe, who left the social-networking company last year, is part of a group buying the Facebook online game provider MindJolt of San Francisco. DeWolfe, along with former MySpace executives Colin Digiaro and Aber Whitcomb, made the acquisition with Austin Ventures, MindJolt said Wednesday. MindJolt provides access to 1,300 games on the Web and has more than 20 million active users on Facebook and other sites, according to the statement. Terms weren’t disclosed. DeWolfe, who will be chief executive, left MySpace in April, about four years after selling the social network to News Corp. as part of a deal worth $580 million.

Technology

San Jose-based Cisco Systems Inc. said that it sees “underlying strength” in the economy and that customers are saying they need to spend more on technology.

“We see very positive spending trends across all of our business segments” and across the world, Ned Hooper, who is in charge of Cisco’s consumer unit and mergers and acquisitions, said Wednesday at a Morgan Stanley conference in San Francisco. Cisco’s revenue gained last quarter for the first time in a year as companies boosted spending to cope with rising amounts of video, messages and other data sent over their networks.

Leaders are effective not because they carry out the best practices competently, or have the best processes, or make a lot of phone calls. Customers will do business with people they like. They like people they can trust, and they trust people who show concern and competence. Employees will work well if they feel heard, if they clearly know what is required of them and if they feel that you understand that they are people too, and make decisions on a daily basis outside of work which affect them and their family.

II. Leaders listen

Listening skills are not hereditary, they are acquired. Most skills are acquired in early childhood and if children do not feel that adults are listening then it is very likely they will not listen as adults. Most people (75% according to some studies) do not listen well. People are motivated by leaders listening to them. People are more likely to follow an example than advice, so create better listeners by being a better listener. Everybody knows something that you don’t, and if you listen you will find out ideas that people have for bettering the organization.

III. Leaders do not judge

If you criticize someone’s idea they will almost certainly never use yours. Two heads are better than one and effective teamwork should always be considered an option. This means not only teaching others to work together and use each others ideas, but for you to become part of the process.

IV. Leaders delegate

Employees’ potential is often wasted. A good leader does not manage every single detail. A good leader recognizes that everyone has skills outside the immediate environment, and trusts employees to use those skills wisely.

V. Leaders motivate

Employees tend to stagnate when motivation decreases. Motivation is not the old fashioned “Do as I say or something bad will happen” – this is fear. That may have short term results but it is not effective longer term. Instead, challenge your employees, it initiates excitement and creativity. Set targets that may be slightly out of their range of achievement, and see what results. Then guide them towards the solution but don’t give it. Coach them into discovering it themselves and their self esteem will rise, together with better results for you.

VI. Leaders understand people

People in general do not change much. Look at your employees as they are now. Manage for their current abilities, not for the abilities of one outstanding individual. That individual will find his own way up. By constant observation look at what is required to do the job and become adept at interviewing and hiring.

VII. Leaders learn

Leaders look at themselves and their actions to see if they could have done better, and remember to do it better next time. Leaders educate themselves by searching for information, reading about leadership, talking to other leaders, trading ideas and experiences, and remembering that change is constant. They keep up with all the trends in management, technical, industry and people issues. When their business has grown to employing 5-15 staff, they need to change from a manager of things to a manager of people, and from a technical expert to a strategic thinker.

VIII. Leaders plan ahead

It is not enough to come to work to just do your job, and leave at the end of the day and move on. That is what employees do, that is their contract. Leaders think about “what happens next”, “what if” and have the answers and a plan of action ready. They are constantly thinking ahead, writing down ideas for improvement, and working out ways where the day to day processes work smoothly to give them more time.

IX. Leaders set goals for themselves

Leaders invest time and money if necessary in personal development. Think where you and/or your business wants to be in 3-5 years time. Write down those goals, and write down what needs to be done to achieve each one. The goals may be financial, personal or hobby related. Map out a plan for your life and if possible put timelines on each objective. Review the plan regularly to gauge results, and modify as required as circumstances change. Seek the support of those close to you who are affected, to gain their buy in, and keep them informed of how you are going against your goals. This is exactly what happens in a business when owners make a Strategic Plan for the next 3-5 years.

Leadership can be explained as the skill of motivating a group of people in order to achieve a common goal. The leader is a director of the action and a source of inspiration. He/she should have a combination of impressive personality and communication skills that can make others follow certain principles. Leadership skills are a key to progress and success in personal and profession life. Leadership is nothing but inspiring and enthusing the followers with a desire to achieve goals. It’s all about raising the confidence of the followers. There are several famous quotes about leadership that reflect the knowledge and wisdom of the great people. These leadership quotes are truly meaningful and they can motivate and inspire you to work hard to achieve your aim. If you wish to be a great leader, you should study and contemplate these famous leadership quotes by some great people. Following are some of the thoughtful and inspirational quotes that you can implement in every aspect of life for the effective leadership.

Famous Leadership Quotes

“A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” – John C. Maxwell

“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” – Ralph Nader

“The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such.” – Andre Maurois

“The only safe ship in a storm is leadership.” – Faye Wattleton

“Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.” – Vince Lombardi

“Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish.” – Sam Walton

“A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action.” – Jawaharlal Nehru

“Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint.” – Lewis H. Lapham

“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into people, but to elicit it, for the greatness is there already.” – John Buchan

“Leadership is not about changing the mindset of the group, but in the cultivation of an environment that brings out the best and inspires the individuals in that group.” – Arthur F. Carmazzi

“The real leader has no need to lead – he is content to point the way.” – Henry Miller

“Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it.” – John Naisbitt

“Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.” – Colin Powell

“Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it.” – Marian Anderson

“The very essence of leadership is that you have to have vision. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.” – Theodore M. Hesburgh

“Leadership is the special quality which enables people to stand up and pull the rest of us over the horizon.” – James Fisher

“Leadership should be more participative than directive, more enabling than performing.” – Mary D. Poole